


Like Blood Pulled Through A Vein

by dramatispersonae



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Wings, Canon-Typical Bastardry, D/s themes, Extremely Dubiously Consensual Weird Intimacy, Hurt/Comfort, Is It Undernegotiated Kink Or Just Physical Aggression Everyone Involved Is Weirdly Into? You Decide, Masochism, Molting Due To Stress, Monstrous Wings, Mutual Dubious Consent, Other, Questionably Transactional Intimacy, Ragged Feathers in Need of Grooming, Sadism, Sensation Play, Violent Ideation, Wing Kink, Wing envy, Wingfic, Wingless Character is Fascinated by Winged Character's Wings, Wings Incorporated Into BDSM, Wings Signify Magical Powers, touch starvation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:27:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25139224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dramatispersonae/pseuds/dramatispersonae
Summary: Company is in short supply at the Magnus Institute. Safety is in even shorter supply. Helen can provide somewhere between one fifth and seven ninths of those.
Relationships: Melanie King/Helen | The Distortion (The Magnus Archives)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 25
Collections: Wingfic Exchange June 2020





	Like Blood Pulled Through A Vein

**Author's Note:**

  * For [forsyte](https://archiveofourown.org/users/forsyte/gifts).



> [*red bull gives you wings voice*] fear gods gives you wings

Melanie knows what Helen is. She's not stupid. She knows, she's always known, that the key to _anything_ is adequate knowledge and preparation. If you make a mistake, if you even look like you don't know what you're doing, you're vulnerable. She's not always acted in accordance with that knowledge, but she's had it. And she's trapped in an archive. So after Helen showed up with offers of camaraderie and assistance, Melanie fucking _read_. And listened to some tapes. Mostly read. It's faster, and she doesn't want to hear Jon's voice. Looking at his notes is okay, though, scrawled theories and observations in the margins of statements. It almost feels like being able to argue with him, reading something and coming up with her own theory and then glancing over at the margin to see Jon's written something completely contrary and rubbish. And that's…

Something to hold onto, though what emotions it comes bundled with Melanie doesn't know. It's hard to know. It's getting harder to know all the time, when every emotion besides the sharp bright gleam of being right and unstoppable and vicious seem less… just less. She doesn't know if that's an emotion, technically, but it feels sort of like anger if anger turned her into a driving, unbreakable spear, so she thinks it counts.

Melanie also knows what she is. What she's becoming, or might become.

She's not frightened of much these days, so long as she can get at it with a sharp object. What scares Melanie are the things she can't touch and she can't see, things that tighten the noose and wait just close enough that she knows they're there, but far enough out of sight that she can't tell when they'll strike. She knows where the bullet is. She doesn't know where the Institute's hooks are.

Helen is somewhere between the two. Which means that Melanie doesn't, shouldn't, can't trust her, but she's still a better alternative than relying on the Institute in any capacity. Melanie would like to rely on just herself and Basira, or even better yet, just herself, but she can't. Not yet. Not completely. The attack proved that. The attack proved that Helen could be something like helpful, as long as she wants to be.

So. Melanie needs to provide an incentive.

Helen said the door would be there if Melanie or Basira needed it. Melanie hadn't actually believed her. She hadn't known as much about Helen then as she knows now, but it seemed like a bad idea, just in general, to trust women in trouser suits who opened doors where doors shouldn't be that _swallowed_ horrible bulging meat monsters who didn't die when they were stabbed in three of their hearts. After Melanie scoured Jon's notes, she trusted Helen even less. But the door is there. A different door this time, she thinks. It's a tasteful dark wood, with an ornate black handle that highlights the similarly-colored detailing in the decorative glass. It also has scratches in it, big thick ones, that are very clearly not from claws or blades but large, blunt fingernails.

She knocks.

Helen opens the door. "Oh!" she says, delighted. "Hel-lo. What brings you back so soon?"

She looks not dishevelled so much as discomposed. Her hair is an uneven blend of curls and waves and ringlets, strangely off-kilter in a way that feels uncharacteristic even though Melanie doesn't have any reason to think that. Her makeup is only half there, and what that means changes from moment to moment. There's a loose thread on her blazer, and her wings…

Melanie doesn't know when she started to notice the wings. It wasn't when she first joined the Institute, she knows, because it had taken her a while after that to figure out that she had really, really fucked up. It's hard to point to a specific day, which it shouldn't be, because for most of her life there were no people with wings and then, recently enough that she should be able to remember, there were. It's like the idea of people with wings faded into her mind with the ability to see them, and now she's so used to it that the shifting, rustling, whispering appendages on Helen's back hadn't been the most remarkable thing about her sudden and unexpected appearance during the attack by the Flesh.

(The Flesh monsters had wings too.)

The appearance of Helen's wings had been hard to focus on at the time, but Melanie is sure they looked much, much better groomed than this. So whatever she was going to say before she noticed that is immediately lost, and what she says instead is "Are you alright?"

She doesn't know if she's actually being genuine, if she wants to know or if Helen's appearance just triggered a reflex, but it's been a while since a phrase like that came out of her regardless, and it's not actually counter to the relationship she's trying to establish here to express concern.

Helen seems more surprised than Melanie. She recovers unevenly, voice pitching between shock and acceptance a few times as she replies, "I am not sure what you mean!"

"You kind of look…" Melanie waves a hand at her. "And your door's all…" she waves her other hand at the door. It's open, so the scratches aren't visible, but she assumes Helen will know what she means.

"Ah," Helen says. "This. I'm afraid my new resident has had some difficulty _adjusting_. But it's—" There's a noise like breaking wood, like the first time Melanie heard a tree branch fall and made a fool of herself by startling badly, and a bruise blooms like a tea flower across Helen's cheek. Melanie looks around, behind, through Helen, sure that the enormous leader of the pack ("Jared Hopworth," she thinks he is, though he appears to have evolved) is breaking through a door or a wall nearby. But there's nothing. Just the lamps, casting their soft light against the retro-modern foil wallpaper. "—it's fine," Helen says, as if there was no interruption.

"Does it hurt?" Melanie asks.

"It depends on how you define 'hurt'," Helen says. "I'll adapt soon enough, and I have no concerns that he'll _win_."

"Yeah, but." Melanie wonders if the damage has to be done from inside the corridors, or if she could take a chainsaw to the outside of the door and pierce through to Helen's heart. At least make her bleed a little. It's a… research curiosity. Fueled by how good it felt to watch Helen's cheek go purple, red, green, orange, yellow, blue. She's not sure if a bruise should be all those colors, or if Helen's even is, but whatever it looks like, she liked seeing it happen. "You don't look comfortable."

Helen's wings fluff and then resettle, even less smooth than they were before. "I'll survive," Helen says, and there is a bitter, aggressive promise in it.

"D'you want help? With your wings," Melanie says. "I mean, I don't have wings, I don't know exactly what you need for them, but maybe I could, uh. Help you with crooked feathers." That was a stupid offer. Too personal, probably, or rude somehow, in horrible-winged-monster society. Or not personal enough, maybe? She doesn't know how that could be the case, but she's in such unfamiliar territory she can't rule it out. Melanie doesn't know how to make exchanges like this, no matter what people have implied about her in the lawless hellscape of YouTube comments. But 'herself' is all she can think to offer, the only point of entry.

If she's being fully honest, there's more than a little selfishness in it. Melanie wants so goddamn badly to touch something she doesn't have to hurt and doesn't have to worry about not hurting. Maybe she could have tried harder to think of a different method of securing Helen's protection, but she didn't.

"I… suppose?" Helen says. "There have been a few coming loose. I could…" she turns around, then sits and extends her wings out of the doorway. Her wingspan, Melanie is sure, is too long. Helen isn't tall enough to have wings that size. Unless she is. Melanie can't remember how tall Helen is, actually, just remembers having to look up, which is meaningless for determining an actual height. Melanie is used to having to look up at other people. But she's pretty sure that in order to have wings this long and not drag them along the ground, Helen would have to be taller than the doorway, and she fit into it perfectly.

Melanie refuses to get distracted by that bit of anatomical improbability. She's seen so much worse. Instead, she kneels down behind Helen, balancing her weight carefully, ready to spring up, back, forward, to the side at a moment's notice. And looks at the wings in front of her.

The feathers shine with dust-like, reflective fragments, like butterfly wings. Melanie remembers her dad telling her not to touch the wings of butterflies, that they wouldn't be able to fly anymore if she did. Helen wouldn't have offered her wings to Melanie if they worked the same, though. Or if they do and Melanie damages them, it's Helen's own fault for offering them up. Melanie doesn't even know if Helen can fly at all. Does she ever even leave the hallways? Are there parts of it that are wide enough for her to fly in?

Melanie reaches out and strokes the top of one of Helen's wings. It's soft, like smooth wood, like a shag carpet, like a cat, like a feather pillow in a hotel room between her teeth. She lifts her hand and checks her fingers. They glint a bit, but she can't actually see any not-butterfly-scales on them. Just the impression of iridescence, like watery paint. 

Helen sighs.

Melanie brushes her hand over the top of Helen's wing again, slower this time. She thought she felt… There. One small, rounded feather, shaped like a very squashed oval, sticking out at the wrong angle. She plays with it, testing, and it wiggles like a stranded tooth, or a loose fish. She tugs once, sharply, and it comes loose. Helen flinches. She doesn't complain, though, or attack, or anything. Melanie rolls the feather between her fingers, holding it on the shaft, the soft, stringlike bits beneath the feather proper brushing lightly over her skin. "Where do these go?" she asks.

" _Ordinarily_ , they go on my wings," Helen says. "However, they're rather hard to put back once removed."

"It'll grow back," Melanie says, with a remarkable amount of confidence considering she has no real evidence to back that up. Feathers grow back on birds. That probably counts as evidence. "I meant once they come off. I haven't seen any big shed feathers around anywhere." She hasn't seen any shed feathers in her clothing or her bed, either, and she'd wondered, when she let herself think about it at all.

"What a completely irrelevant question," Helen says. She sounds like she thinks she's giving a compliment. "I can't say I really keep track."

"I mean, they're not real feathers, so they probably just… disappear, right?"

"You have a fascinating concept of reality," Helen says.

"Thanks, I guess," Melanie says. She rakes her fingers down Helen's wing rather than across it this time, and Helen shivers. Melanie does it again, and again, working her way out to the end of her reach, more focused on the sensation than on setting Helen's feathers in any kind of order. "A lot of these feel loose."

Helen hums noncommittally.

"Are you shedding?" Melanie asks. There's a word for it when it's birds, right? "Molting, I mean?"

The snap of a shattering lightbulb, and one of the longest feathers near the very end of Helen's wing breaks off in the middle. "Not intentionally," Helen says.

"Is it usually intentional?" Melanie asks. She doesn't know much about birds. She knew someone who had a budgie growing up, and that's about the extent of her awareness. However, she sincerely doubts that the wings of horrible magic monsters work exactly like the wings of birds. For example, she thinks the patterns on Helen's wings are changing, the tiny detailed shapes and lines and mazes on each feather shifting color and weight and position, and she is certain that no bird, budgie or not, does that. It kind of reminds her of an octopus, actually, a video she saw once of one dreaming and shifting through colors and textures like waves on a beach. Because it's not just the little details, she realizes, but Helen's wings entire, colors rolling through and over them so smoothly Melanie hadn't noticed.

"Well, not precisely," Helen says. "But this is a bit non-standard. Half timing, half necessity. There's enough damage being done that it makes more sense to do a full renovation than just repairs." She flicks her fingers over her shoulder, dislodging plaster dust that wasn't there before and ceases to exist immediately after. "It's not every day I eat something that's already been consumed. It's rarely pleasant."

"So you're molting because that Flesh guy is running around in your halls breaking things," Melanie says.

She can't see Helen's face, but she can feel the smile. "A neat explanation, that suffices in most major areas. Well done."

Helen's not being patronizing, or at least, not in the same way most people have been patronizing to Melanie. A distant part of Melanie is aware of this, but it's overwhelmed by the buzzing static haze of 'fuck you, you're not better than me. Fuck you, _fuck you—_ '

Melanie yanks on a feather. A longer one, one she can wrap her entire fist around. It was loose, but not that loose. It comes out anyway. Helen twitches and lets out a hissing exhalation that is not quite a true hiss, and for a moment Melanie gets the sense that she has made a mistake, piercing through the haze of violence like an arrow trailing a banner declaring her bad judgement. And isn't that always the case, always the wrong kind of angry, the wrong time, the wrong place, the wrong target… The haze closes again.

Melanie doesn't apologize. 

Helen doesn't kill her.

Melanie pulls out a few more feathers, but only the ones that are particularly wiggly. She tries to finger-comb and straighten feathers at least as much as she pulls them, because Helen could disappear at any point, and if she decides she doesn't like what Melanie's doing, that point could be a lot sooner. She could also try to attack Melanie, but that's less of a deterrent. Part of Melanie always wants a fight. Part of Melanie always wants the risk of death. Part of Melanie always wants to go down with her blood mixing in with the blood of her opponent, a glorious symphony of red. But she's trying to survive, right now. That's the whole point.

That, and she just likes touching Helen's wings. They're beautiful, in a horrible way, like all the most interesting things are. They make her hands buzz like menthol. They're so soft she's sure they're going to cut her, and they make her want to imagine colors that don't exist. 

The feathers she pulls, she keeps, amassing a small collection in various sizes and colors and degrees of wholeness. Whatever Jared's doing in the hallways, it seems to be taking quite a toll.

"Why would you do that?" Melanie asks.

"I'm not sure what you're asking about, but there's a high likelihood that I don't know," Helen says cheerfully. Melanie mistimes pulling out another feather. She'd meant to yank it out in the middle of Helen talking, hear if her voice squeaked or faltered, but instead she pulls it just after Helen finishes her sentence and gets only a flinch that ripples down the length of Helen's wing.

"Let Jared in your hallways." What she means is 'help us,' but she doesn't want to say that. She doesn't want to name it, in case naming it directly is one of the conditions that will cause Helen to _stop_. "He's hurting you, isn't he?"

"You're hurting me," Helen points out, and Melanie stills, her hand resting flat on Helen's wing. "It doesn't bother me."

"Oh," Melanie says. She's not sure what else to say. Thankfully, Helen continues, 

"I want to help. The other one seemed quite for the idea of keeping him contained, and there simply isn't anything in your Institute that could do the job as well as I can."

"It's not _my_ Institute," Melanie growls, fisting her hand in Helen's feathers, forcing several of them into odd positions.

"No, it's not," Helen agrees, sounding slightly out of breath. Does she even breathe? Does it matter if she does? "You're hearing a different song, aren't you?"

Now Melanie's breath falters, as the music swells in her blood. She doesn't normally feel it like this. Usually it's just a muted hum, but sometimes, sometimes, she gets a hint of something more, something that terrifies her with how much she wants it, how right it makes her feel, how she knows it will take far, far too much from her (but maybe not, maybe she just thinks that she can't handle it because other people think that she can't handle it. She shouldn't believe them. She shouldn't let them be right). Then it drops back down, the quiet background accompaniment to every violent joy. "Y—yeah," she says. She lets go of Helen's feathers and tries to smooth them out. "You can… tell, then?"

"Yes, but don't worry. I'm quite good with secrets," Helen says. She turns her head to regard Melanie over her shoulder for the first time and winks. Melanie almost pulls out another feather completely accidentally. "Though of course, I feel I must offer, if you ever want a _third_ option…"

"Thanks," Melanie says, "but I've got enough."

"You're always welcome to change your mind," Helen says, and then laughs as if she's made a joke.

* * *

Melanie returns to Helen a few days later.

At some point the feathers she'd taken disappeared, or she lost them. Or Basira threw them out. Basira might have thrown them out. Separated from Helen, the feathers had become different shades of slightly iridescent tawny brown, no shifting lines of purple or gold or blue, no swirls of green or silver or red (or did those colors go the other way around? Were those even the colors? Were those even the patterns?) but the size alone meant there was no mistaking them for ordinary feathers. And only Basira could have thrown them out, because Basira is the only other one in the Archives anymore, and Melanie thinks Basira and Martin might be the only other two people in the Institute who can see the wings.

Peter can probably see the wings, given what she's read about him in the statements, but she's never seen Peter, so he doesn't count. She doesn't think he'd be throwing out her feathers, anyway.

(They're not Melanie's feathers. Melanie's feathers —)

Melanie knocks on Helen's door. It's a different door. Or, she thinks it's different? She's not actually entirely sure. The detailing in the glass seems different, and the wood seems paler. The fingernail marks are gone, but the handle looks bent. Jared's still causing problems, it seems. Good. That means Melanie knows how to be useful.

It takes longer for it to open this time, and when it does swing open, Melanie bites her tongue. Helen looks tired, and her wings are missing a lot more feathers. The fluff beneath — down, it's called — is visible in some places, and completely gone in others, revealing skin and pinfeathers. There's a bit of down in Helen's hair.

Melanie might have done some research on molting, and feather terminology in general. It's the first time she's really properly looked into it. She didn't really see a reason to, before, when she first started seeing the wings, since she had no reason to believe it would be relevant. And then when her own back had started to itch, she really didn't want to think about it, and had plenty of more immediately relevant things to focus on.

"Back again?" Helen says, her usual teasing tone a thin, see-through coat of paint over her exhaustion.

"You're a mess," Melanie says.

Helen chuckles. It echoes through the tunnels like they're made of glass. "It is a bit dramatic to molt with a full set of wings. It wouldn't be nearly so bad for you yet."

"Is it that obvious?" Melanie asks.

"Not at all!" Helen says. "It's just the right blend of hidden and clear for people to delude themselves about it, and that's quite a beacon for me. Is that what you're here about? Get some answers for all your questions?"

"Not really," Melanie says. "I… mostly wanted to see if I could help with your wings any more."

"Oh," Helen says. She sounds genuinely surprised again. "I… yes, I wouldn't mind that at all."

"Cool," Melanie says. Then she takes a breath. "Do we have to stay in the tunnels? It's cold down here. And there's no chairs." She'd liked the tunnels a lot more before winter set in. She still likes them, because they're not the Institute and she doesn't feel like she's being watched all the time and that's worth a lot, but it had taken her hours to get warm after she finished with Helen's wings last time, and her leg still hurts from kneeling for that long. The tunnels aren't a good place for… longer engagements.

"You could always come in," Helen says, gesturing at the corridor behind her. The raised-panel wood wainscoting combined with the soft geometric patterns on the light pink wallpaper gives it a homey, inviting look. That's a setup if Melanie's ever seen one. But if Helen tries to imprison Melanie in there, Melanie is certain she can make Helen regret it.

"Do _you_ have chairs?" Melanie asks.

"Not usually," Helen says. "I can make an exception."

"And we won't run into the… bone guy?"

"Oh, no. He can't get anywhere near us if I don't want him to."

"And you don't. Right?"

Helen laughs. "Goodness, you are so suspicious. It's very smart of you. No, I don't want him to. I just want to have a little social time with a friend, and he is decidedly not a friend." She steps to the side, and gestures Melanie in.

Melanie almost hesitates on the threshold. But the corridor feels warm, and really, what is there to be afraid of? That she'll be stuck somewhere evil and never be able to leave? Too late for that. Plus, this is what she wanted. It's working. There's no reason to back out now.

She enters.

"Let's find you a chair," Helen says, and sets off, away from the door. Melanie follows her.

The corridor is much warmer than the tunnels. It's a decidedly living heat, not at all like the dry, hot air blown through vents. Melanie can't see any vents. Sometimes she thinks she feels airflow, but from where, she has no idea. While the corridor is wide enough that she could walk shoulder-to-shoulder with Helen if she wanted to be stupid like that, it feels constricting, like it's curving over and around her. She feels like she's being swallowed. It's reassuring, almost, because a throat can be cut.

Then there is a chair, sitting in the corridor like it should be beside a door. The crossbars attach to the wrong legs, of which there are too many, not enough, the right amount but at the wrong angles. And then it is a chair, like it has always been, what's _wrong_ with her (not enough sleep, she has to knock herself out chemically to make sure she doesn't dream).

"You look a little dizzy. Maybe you should sit down," Helen says, and the whole corridor smiles.

Melanie is sitting down. Helen is sitting on the floor across from her. "Take your time," Helen says, and it doesn't matter how ragged her wings are, the way her blouse is wrinkled. She is the most dangerous thing that could maybe exist. Melanie wants to hurt her about it. "This might all be a bit much."

"I'm fine," Melanie says, and maybe she'd be more convincing if it didn't come out like 'm fiiih,' but probably not by much. "Just. Dizzy."

"Yes," Helen says. She shifts, reaches over her shoulder, scratches her wing. "Perhaps another time would be better."

"No," Melanie says forcefully. "No, I'm fine. Come over here."

Helen makes a pleased noise and scoots closer, then turns around. Keeping her wings from dragging on the floor or hitting Melanie involves a complicated folding and unfolding and refolding that makes Melanie's eyes hurt. What matters is that at the end of it Helen is in front of Melanie, wings spread and back arched. Melanie can't quite figure out how the wings work with Helen's clothes, if they just clip through, if there are tightly tailored openings, if that's even the right way to think about it. She wonders how it would work for her, if she ever…

"Does it hurt to grow wings?" she asks Helen.

"I imagine so," Helen says. Her feathers twitch, and Melanie scratches along the top of Helen's wing lightly. "Oh. Yes. A little closer to…" she sighs contentedly as Melanie adjusts her positioning.

"Did it hurt for you to grow wings?" Melanie asks.

"I didn't," Helen says. "Not the way you're thinking. Helen grew wings, I suppose, or my wings grew as Helen was undone, but — ah, a little further down — I am a bit of a unique case. It would almost certainly hurt for you."

"Right," Melanie says. Her fingernails drag over pinfeathers, and she remembers what she read, that if a pinfeather breaks it will bleed and bleed and bleed, and all you can do to make it stop is to pull out the whole thing. Would Helen bleed? Does she have blood? Or would she just leak hallucinations? Melanie itches to find out. "It hasn't hurt so far."

"Lucky you," Helen says, in a tone that makes it very clear she knows Melanie is lying. Melanie doesn't even know why she's lying. A lifetime of refusal to acknowledge when things hurt, because 'getting hurt' means 'being weak?' Trying to look tougher to something that works in impossibilities? Trying to convince herself it's not that bad, that she has it under control?

A feather the length of her forearm comes off in her hand. She wasn't even pulling this time. She twirls it between her fingers thoughtfully, then strokes it down the side of Helen's neck. Helen shudders and squeaks. "That tickles," she says, and she sounds delighted. Melanie strokes it down the other side of Helen's neck, then pokes Helen in the cheek. Helen's laughter makes Melanie feel like she's trying to balance on a narrow path of tennis balls.

Melanie's heard more laughter in the past few days she's spent with Helen than she has in months. Melanie has caused most of it. It feels… nice. She flips the feather around, and drags the point of the quill down the back of Helen's neck, pressing just hard enough to leave a visible line. Helen sighs and tucks her chin down, leaving the back of her neck open for Melanie. Melanie experiments with different pressures and shapes, scratching the quill over Helen's skin. If it were sharper, if it were harder, Melanie could drive it right between Helen's vertebrae and out through the front of her throat. She probably shouldn't be able to, that's probably not how bones work, but she knows that she _could_. It's not like Helen cares how bones work. Melanie saw Helen's reflection in the blade of her knife.

(In the reflection, Helen's wings didn't have feathers.)

Very deliberately, to prove she's in control, to prove it to herself and Helen and the bullet and the Beholding and _Elias_ , that bastard, she hopes he doesn't know what's happening at but she hopes he can tell that she's winning, she takes the quill away from Helen's skin and reaches around her face, running the edge of the feather down Helen's nose. Helen gasps and twitches away. "Melanie!" she says, and her name spoken in that shivering voice makes Melanie very aware of her own heartbeat. Like a drum, like a march. Compelling her onwards.

"Are you having fun?" Helen asks. Sat in the chair, their relative heights are such that Melanie can see Helen rub her nose with her knuckle, though whether Melanie is looking up or down to see it she's not sure.

"Maybe I am," Melanie says. "Are you?"

"Very much so," Helen says. She fluffs up her feathers. "However, I am also itchy."

Melanie contemplates placing the feather, quill-first, down Helen's blouse, so it can still brush against Helen's face while Melanie resumes working her fingers through Helen's wings. She decides she rather likes the idea, and does it, making sure to scratch the point of it down Helen's chest as it disappears past her neckline. Helen lets out a fluttering exhale.

Melanie, since she seems to be so full of good ideas, takes a new tactic with Helen's wings, reaching through and past the top layer of feathers to scrape her fingers against the down and the skin beneath. She encounters loose bits of down, too, and carefully works them out, pulling them from beneath the coverts.

" _That's_ nice," Helen says. Then she gasps. Melanie accidentally caught her finger on one of Helen's pinfeathers and did something not quite dramatic enough to call 'bending' but more severe than 'tugging.' Melanie can't tell if it's a good gasp or a bad one. To say nothing of if it's a gasp of pleasure or pain, because she's gathering a fair amount of evidence that that isn't a very useful distinction to make. It's about feeling, she thinks. The Spiral likes to mess with perceptions. The Spiral likes perceptions. It likes feelings, beliefs, twisting and winding up in each other until you can't tell what anything is.

Evidently, however, there are some limits. Helen folds her wing out of Melanie's grasp and spreads the wing beneath it.

Wait.

The what?

"How many wings do you have?" Melanie demands. She thought it was just _two_. She doesn't understand how Helen's wings could fold and fit over each other such that she has an entire other set that Melanie didn't notice. They're not the same colors, the same patterns, they're not missing feathers in the same places. She's spent a while with her hands on Helen's wings, at this point, or at least enough time that she should have noticed. And if she didn't notice this set, well...

"I don't think it works that way," Helen says, and extends a third set of wings demonstratively, peering over her shoulder and watching Melanie's reaction with a mischievous smile. Then she twitches. Turning brought her nose in contact with the tip of the feather in her blouse. She turns back around, the feather dragging over her cheek, and sniffles.

Melanie watches Helen rub her nose. Then she looks at Helen's wings. Then back at Helen's face.

She didn't think this would be easy. But as she looks at the array of feathers, the new shapes and textures to explore, the oddly-angled ones that she knows she can pull free, and all the places on Helen's skin where the marks have faded, she doesn't feel daunted, doesn't feel trapped.

She's in control.

**Author's Note:**

> for [forsyte](https://archiveofourown.org/users/forsyte/pseuds/forsyte), for the wingfic exchange, which i only learned about because they posted the signup link in a server we're both in, and then we both talked about the exchange in a way that made me getting assigned to them as a writer the inevitable, unavoidable narrative conclusion. i hope you enjoy the fruits of me telling you that i didn't care if the specificity of a request gave a writer conniptions. i stand by that but now it's really really funny that i said it at all. 
> 
> title is from the Radical Face song [Rivers In The Dust](https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/radicalface/riversinthedust.html)
> 
> fun fact: in my personal judgement this is the most blatantly erotic fiction i have ever published!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Like Blood Pulled Through A Vein](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26170333) by [Yvonne (connect_the_stars)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/connect_the_stars/pseuds/Yvonne)




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